Testing postgres database accessibility from django

I am using the django ORM with a postgres database. A small group of users interact with it using import and export scripts. The database is only available on our intranet. If someone tries to use the database when postgres is unavailable the scripts hang. I would like to make the scripts test whether the database is available before attempting to process any data.

I can connect to the database using the shell, import a model, and attempt to make a query:

from myapp.models import mymodel
mymodel.objects.count()

this results in a long delay, but then django raises an OperationalError with an informative message ("could not connect to server: Network is unreachable...").

I thought to test database access by making a minimal query to the database, something like:

from django.db import connection
cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("select 1")

but this never progresses beyond the cursor = connection.cursor() line. No error message.

Why does one of these queries raise an error, but not the other?
What's the best way to test from a script whether the database is available?
How can I ensure that an error will be raised if the connection doesn't succeed within reasonable (perhaps user specified) time?

This is not a web application, so a middleware solution à la How do I test a database connection in Django? isn't possible.

Edit

Following @benjaoming's suggestion, I've made a function to test the connection:

import socket

def test_connection():
    """Test whether the postgres database is available. Usage:

        if "--offline" in sys.argv:
            os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'myapp.settings.offline'
        else:
            os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'myapp.settings.standard'
            from myapp.functions.connection import test_connection
            test_connection()
    """
    try:
        s = socket.create_connection(("example.net", 5432), 5)
        s.close()
    except socket.timeout:
        msg = """Can't detect the postgres server. If you're outside the
        intranet, you might need to turn the VPN on."""
        raise socket.timeout(msg)

This seems to do the trick.

Solution

You can use another method for finding out if the postgres server is reachable: For instance the socket module -- just do a socket.create_connection(("server", port)) and see what exceptions it raises...